{"id":18028,"date":"2022-03-14T09:33:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T16:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=18028"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:13:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:13:01","slug":"is-disney-deliberately-burying-its-fox-searchlight-slate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/is-disney-deliberately-burying-its-fox-searchlight-slate\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Disney Deliberately Burying Its Fox\/Searchlight Slate?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On March 18, Deep Water<\/em> will hit Hulu in the US and Amazon Prime Video internationally. Based on Patricia Highsmith\u2019s novel of the same name and starring Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas, it\u2019s an erotic thriller in the tradition of director Adrian Lyne\u2019s earlier hits 9\u00bd Weeks <\/em>and Fatal Attraction<\/em>. Originally planned as a theatrical release, Deep Water<\/em> is now going the direct-to-streaming route. Some have speculated it\u2019s because the two stars, who began dating after the shoot, have since split up and might not want to do red carpets and talk show appearances together. Others believe it\u2019s yet another sign of Disney\u2019s mishandling of all things Fox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latter school of thought dates back to March 2019, when Disney completed its acquisition of Fox\u2019s film and TV assets, including 20th<\/sup> Century Fox (now 20th<\/sup> Century Studios) and Fox Searchlight (now Searchlight Pictures). Many were skeptical as to the Mouse\u2019s willingness to keep two adult-oriented brands alive, even though that was precisely part of the reasons the acquisition happened in the first place: having parted ways with the Weinstein brothers in 2005 and ended its distribution deal with DreamWorks in 2016, Disney was actively looking for a new way of putting out smaller, awards-friendly fare. Fox, and Searchlight in particular, fit the bill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point: last year\u2019s Best Picture winner, Nomadland<\/em>, was a Searchlight title, as is one of this year\u2019s nominees, Nightmare Alley<\/em>, with  20th<\/sup> Century Studios\u2019 West Side Story<\/em> also in the running. Both films have also been described as works that Disney \u201cburied\u201d by deliberately releasing them in unfavorable conditions, similar to Ridley Scott\u2019s The Last Duel<\/em> and, to a lesser extent, Wes Anderson\u2019s The French Dispatch<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supposedly, this shows a lack of faith in anything more adult-oriented, with the botched releases serving as an excuse to shift most of the 20th<\/sup> Century Studios and Searchlight output towards the company\u2019s streaming services. And while there is definitely an imbalance at play, per official announcements regarding future titles, that imbalance concerns most of Disney\u2019s brands, due to current CEO Bob Chapek\u2019s focus on  streaming. Even Pixar, once the company\u2019s crown jewel of theatrical animation, is no match for Chapek\u2019s business-centric attitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Going back to the Fox situation, there is a contractual quirk at play: all films that were actively in production prior to the completion of the merger have<\/em> to be released in theaters first (they would also go to HBO Max for their first streaming window, due to a pre-existing deal that will expire this year). However, that does not necessarily mean Disney views them as expendable. In fact, virtually all of them were postponed in the wake of the first lockdown, hoping for better opportunities. The one that wasn\u2019t, X-Men spin-off The New Mutants<\/em>, was unceremoniously dumped in cinemas in August 2020, when American viewers were largely not going to the movies, while international ones were flocking to see Tenet<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in early 2021, the company cut its losses with The Woman in the Window<\/em>, selling it outright to Netflix. If that is an indication of what happens to movies Disney has no faith in, it\u2019s fair to assume they did actually believe in the likes of The French Dispatch<\/em> and The Last Duel<\/em>, going as far as premiering them in Cannes and Venice, respectively. That\u2019s not a choice you make if you want to bury a movie, since a world premiere at a major European festival is a costly affair: in 2013, Venice lost out on 12 Years a Slave<\/em> because Harvey Weinstein, who owned the US rights, insisted that the (much smaller) Italian distributor pay for everyone\u2019s travel and lodging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Scott\u2019s movie suffered from having a touchy subject (rape and toxic masculinity) in an age of moviegoing where marquee names no longer make a real difference (had the film come out ten years ago, with a similarly starry cast, it would likely  have done better). Nightmare Alley<\/em> is too adult-skewing in the current climate, harkening back to classic noir to the extent of receiving an additional theatrical release in black and white. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

West Side Story<\/em>, which stood the best chance thanks to its PG-13 rating and the pedigree of the source material and director Steven Spielberg, was ultimately done in by a marketing campaign that profoundly misunderstood how to sell the movie: the trailers barely hint at the film\u2019s heartfelt dynamism, effectively conveying the image of a straightforward drama based on a popular stage play \u2013 in other words, the kind of material a younger demographic, the one still going to the cinema on a regular basis during the pandemic, will not watch on the big screen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, Death on the Nile<\/em> is doing reasonably well, cementing Hercule Poirot\u2019s status as a new franchise for the studio (a third film is already in development), and confirming the general trend in contemporary moviegoing. So, despite Bob Chapek\u2019s best efforts, the Mouse is not actively trying to kill the Fox. It just picked the worst possible time to start courting a different demographic again. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which we examine the burning question: Is the Mouse House treating its adult-oriented production arm like a red-headed stepchild?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":18030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[162],"class_list":["post-18028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22023,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028\/revisions\/22023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}